


Another Friday Gone

by Morning66



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27464047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: Eddie’s pretty sure he’s never going to understand trigonometry if Richie keeps sitting one seat up and one to the left of him, tapping his fingers against the leg of his jeans with one hand and twirling his pencil with the other.Or, It’s October of 1992 and Eddie’s pretty sure he and Richie are going to implode any minute now.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 105





	Another Friday Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys!!!
> 
> :D
> 
> Hope everyone’s doing well!!!!!

October 30, 1992

Eddie’s pretty sure he’s never going to understand trigonometry if Richie keeps sitting one seat up and one to the left of him, tapping his fingers against the leg of his jeans with one hand and twirling his pencil with the other.

Of course, he might never understand trigonometry either way because it has way too many angles and cosines and fucking cosecants, so it might be a moot point. Still, he can’t help but curse Ms. Albert, a thin, wiry woman from Portland who thinks she’s God’s gift to the Derry hicks, for writing the seating chart so that Richie, distraction extraordinaire, is directly in his line of sight.

Today, it’s not even that he’s doing anything, which is the worst part.

Sure, he’s tapping his foot against the faded linoleum that needed waxed fifty years ago, sole stained with dirt and Sharpy bobbing up and down, but that’s not what Eddie’s paying attention to. No, it’s not that, it’s his fucking wrists that are distracting Eddie from his math. His wrists, specifically the place where his bone sticks out at a sharp right angle before reaching his long, skinny hand. His fucking wrists.

God, I’m going crazy, Eddie thinks and considers putting his face in his hands, except that his hands are probably covered in germs from his desk. It’s times like these that he starts to get an inkling that the problem might not actually be Richie, but something in his own head.

So, as Ms. Albert goes on about her triangles, Eddie watches Richie’s wrists. He’s wearing a long sleeved shirt, a sign as real as the changing of the leaves, the way they start to turn red and orange a town over and brown in Derry, that fall is really, truly upon them. 

Eddie’s always the first to wear pants and jackets and sweaters. Usually his mother starts piling them on in early September even though it mostly still feels like summer. He won’t wear them, but will often be stuck carrying them, clutched in his hand, slung over his shoulder. Once, the fall after that summer, the fall of eighth grade, he tried tying one around his waist like he’s seen Bev do.

“Shit, Eds, wasn’t the fanny pack enough?” Richie had asked through snorts. 

Eddie hadn’t ever done that again.

So Eddie is the first and the second is usually Ben because his mother has always looked for confirmation of her parenting in physical representations, in the meat on her son’s bones and the food on his plate, and the coats on his back. They’re the same in that regard, Eddie thinks, two boys raised by concerned single mothers, his just a bit too concerned.

“Your mom’s not concerned, she’s fucked,” Richie had told him once when he had made the comparison. “She’s rotten, Eds.”

It was one of the rare times his friend had been serious and Eddie hadn’t know what to do with it. He still doesn’t now.

Richie, though, Richie’s usually the last, half because his parents don’t give two shits what he wears and half because he always thinks he’s man enough to survive Maine winter without coats and jackets and scarves.

He isn’t. Nobody is, Eddie thinks, except possibly the lumberjack statue in town. Winters in Derry are cold and brutal and unforgiving and if you try, they’ll give you hypothermia or frostbite or something.

Today Richie’s wearing a pink and blue flannel, colors mashing offensively, that he’s had for several years. The sleeves are too short, but then everything is always too short on Richie, now and forever. He always seems to be growing, up and never out, stretching like silly putty pulled over brittle white bones.

Unfortunately for Eddie, too short sleeves give him a perfect view of Richie’s wrists and hands.

Eddie’s startled out of his thoughts when a pink eraser hits him in the ear. “Psst, Eddie.”

It’s Elsie Swartz, a skinny blonde girl who kissed Stan one time after synagogue the summer they were fourteen and then told everyone in the grade that his lips tasted like birdseed and he kissed like a bird pecked, accusations that followed him the entirety of ninth grade and still occasionally rear their ugly heads.

Eddie blinks at her, confused.

“Can you hear me? You aren’t, like, having a seizure or something, are you?” She looks vaguely interested, as if the prospect of him having some sort of medical emergency might be amusing.

It’s moments like these that Eddie hates that it seems the whole town knows about his myriad of (fictional) medical problems. Sure, they don’t know the details, not even the fucking fake details, but they do know that for the longest time he got medicine from the pharmacy, the special kind of medicine you have to get shipped here from somewhere, not the over the counter ibuprofen that just about everyone and their mother overuses.

“I was just zoned out,” he hisses back, trying to be nice, but he’s already annoyed with the day. “What’s up?”

“Do you have a pen I could borrow?” Elsie pushes her blonde hair behind her ear as she says it.

Eddie nods, glad it’s something simple for once. He unzips his pencil bag and pulls out a blue Bic pen and reaches out to give it to her. She takes it from him, but her hand lingers on his, fingers curling around his palm.

Eddie gulps, and a low edge of fear creeps up in the bottom oh his stomach. It’s not the good kind of fear.

Uncapping the pen, she writes something on the back of his hand, tip pressing uncomfortably into his. Her hand lingers after she writes it, pass of her fingers pressing into his bones and all Eddie can think of is the, like, millions of germs that are on the average hand. When she finally lets go, she send him a wink that makes him sick to his stomach. 

On inspection, she’s written a phone number. Her phone number, assumably. The blue ink blends with the blue veins of his hand, making it look like one whole bruise.

When Eddie looks up, face hot and probably bright pink, Richie’s turned around and is grinning at him. It’s not a good smile, not a kind one, not a sweet. It’s feral and sharp and mean and for a second, Eddie feels like prey, trapped in some sort of sick game he doesn’t understand.

Ms. Alberts breaks the scene with a sharp, “Face front, Richard,” and Richie snaps back, hand to his forehead in a mocking salute. Eddie watches, looks down at his own hand, at the blue ink staining his skin, and feels like he’s going to throw up.

****

“She fucking wants you, Eds,” Richie says in the hallway after class ends.

“Shut up, dickwad. She does not,” Eddie says, dodging a group of freshmen, and tightening his grip on his binder. It’s Friday, Friday and the whole school seems on edge, anticipation heightened to the max because tonight they play the Bangor Area who beat them 42-3 last year.

“Does too,” Richie counters, stopping at his locker and pulling it open. He’d jimmied it at the beginning of the year with a pencil so he wouldn’t have to worry about remembering the combination, he’d said and told Eddie to shut up when he remarked that they’d probably charge him for breaking the lock at the end of the year. 

Richie throws his math book in haphazardly, making Eddie want to cringe. “She wants a piece of your cutie pootie face. Or maybe your ass.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, feeling his face flush at the last part, and he stamps on Richie’s foot, hard. “She does not.”

“Ouch! Gotta learn to go a little easier. You don’t know if Elsie’s into that, if you know what I mean.” Richie leans forward conspiratorially on the last part, giving Eddie a wink.

“She’s not into anything, Richie. She probably just wants homework answers or something,” Eddie whines, hating that his voice still sounds like a ten year old’s.

Richie raises an eyebrow. “You realize I have the best grade in that class, right? If she wanted homework help, she’d go to me. And I would help her, I fucking would.”

Eddie hates that Richie’s right, hates that Richie’s fucking smart enough that he never does anything in class, never does anything at home, never does anything anywhere and still aces every single test.

More than that, though, Eddie hates the emphasis on the last part, hates the idea of Richie helping fucking Elsie and probably not with trigonometry.

“Maybe not, ‘cause you’re a fucking annoying asshole. She probably doesn’t wanna deal with you,” Eddie says, not meaning for it to come out so harsh. He glances at the clock and see’s that he’s got a minute before the late bell rings and two flights of stairs to climb. “C’mon, we gotta get to class, Rich.”

Eddie turns on his heals and heads to the left, knowing Richie’s got to go the right and expecting that to serve as a goodbye. 

Instead, Richie matches his pace. “Is that why you haven’t been over?” he asks, an odd note in his voice that sets Eddie on red alert. “Because I’m annoying?”

Eddie knows he’s talking about, or really around, the fucking elephant’s elephant in the room, but he’d also rather it stay an elephant, thank you very much. 

“We haven’t had a test, Richie, for fuck’s sake.”

“So you’ll come over this weekend? We have bio on Monday, right?”

They do. 

Eddie shrugs his shoulders. Being alone with Richie isn’t what he wants. Or maybe it is and maybe that’s the problem and maybe that’s why there’s a problem in the first place, Jesus fuck. And that doesn’t even make sense.

Then again, nothing in his life makes sense so why should this be any different.

“Maybe,” says Eddie and he can just hear Richie opening his big fat mouth when the bell rings, shrill and loud.

“Shit!” Eddie says and takes off, saved by the bell.

****

Eddie’s the first to the lunch table and he takes the seat he always takes, far right, back against the wall. The table they picked on the first day of Freshman year is in the corner, out of the way, a prayer that no one will bother them. That’s not how it works, Eddie knows. If people really want to bother you, they’ll come and find you. Still, it provides a semblance of safety they’re all happy to take, then and now.

Eddie wipes his hands with one of the little individually wrapped Puerile wipes that his mom has to drive to the next town over for and waits for the others. It takes him a second and then he catches sight of Ben, making his way across the cafeteria, tray in hand, slapping hands with big, beefy football players who just last year tried to stuff Eddie into a locker.

Anymore, it always takes Eddie a moment to recognize Ben because he’s not the Ben who moved here, chubby and sweet and dorky. Well, he’s still dorky and still sweet and still the smartest of anyone, but his baby fat has been replaced with raw, hard earned muscle.

It started last spring, the part of spring that isn’t really spring because it still feels like winter, cold down to you bones. Ben had said he want to get in shape seemingly out of nowhere and mystified the rest of the Losers. He’d taken to salads like a dog to beef jerky, chowing down on them like there was no tomorrow. He also took up running, early in the morning when the sun was just rising, through the streets and out into the fields. Sometimes Eddie had snuck out and went with him, half to prove that he could do it, even if it wasn’t to anyone but himself.

Maybe, because of all of that, it shouldn’t have surprised them that summer when Ben and announced he was going out for the football team. It did though, it really because he was talking about the boys who picked on them their whole lives, because he was talking about the team that was the pride and joy of a town that had nothing to be proud of.

But, go out for he it he did, and he made it on as a linebacker, and now Eddie knows he can’t complain because, fuck if it didn’t raise their social standing a little bit.

Ben sits down one seat over from Eddie and tosses him a kind smile. “You have a good morning, Eddie?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, trying to ignore the way his heat seems to plummet every day when nobody sits between him and Ben.

Bill’s gone, has been gone for three weeks, and the loss of their illustrious leader has left them a little off balance, like a top with a weight on one side, like one of those trick dice that always land on six.

He’d found out early September that his dad was getting transferred to a different office, down in New Hampshire. He’d found that last week that his dad had asked to be transferred, that a Derry with only was son was too hard for him.

“It’s not that far,” his mother had said, one Friday they slept over his house. “Just a few hours, really.”

Maybe she had been trying to console them, but the effort fell flat. It didn’t matter if it were one hour or twenty five, Bill would forget, the way Bev, the way everyone seemed to. Maybe it wouldn’t happen initially, but give it a week. His voice would go bleary and confused when they called, just like Bev’s had a few falls ago. Soon enough, he wouldn’t pick up anymore.

Fuck, they all missed him. Maybe that was why everyone had been off. Maybe that was why—

Eddie didn’t let himself finish that thought, instead taking a bite of his jelly sandwich.

Stan comes a second later, taking the seat catty corner to Eddie. He’s not looking the best, Eddie thinks, dark circles under his eyes and hair a bit messier than usual, but he doesn’t say anything. They’ve all got their little things, their little problems, and sometimes it’s best not to ask.

Richie’s always late to lunch, always held up running his mouth to somebody or using the bathroom or talking to a teacher and today’s no different. He comes nearly ten minutes late, carting a tray of food and takes the seat next to Eddie, grin already hideously wide on his face.

He shoots Eddie a grin that hides a glare and turns to Stan. “Guess what, Stanny?”

Stan doesn’t look in the mood for it, not today. “You finally lost your virginity to Eddie’s mom,” he says flatly.

“Dude, that’s old new! I was, like, eleven then.”

“I’m literally going to vomit, I swear, Richie,” Eddie threatens even though they all know won’t. If he hasn’t yet, he won’t now.

“You’re gonna piss your pants, that’s what you’re gonna do, when I tell my man Stan here who you were eye fucking in math!” Richie responds, turning to Stan. “Guess?”

“Jesus Christ, I wasn’t eye fucking anyone, you’re such an asshole!”

Stan stares at the both of them, thinking. There’s something on the tip of his tongue, Eddie can tell, something he’s considering saying.

God, Eddie doesn’t want to hear it

“Guys, c’mon,” Ben interjects. “I’m sure—“

“Elsie Swartz, who called you fucking bird shit!” Richie says, too loud because heads turn at the next table over. Richie’s always too loud, Eddie thinks, voice always rising, like, ten decibels above the normal range.

“God, shut up, I did not—“

“Fucking bird shit, Stan!” Richie yells over Eddie, the kind of yell that the lunch monitors must be purposely ignoring because they don’t want to discipline kids.

“Will you two be quiet for a second?” Stan asks, exasperated. “And for God’s sake she did not call me bird shit.”

“Same difference, Stan the man,” Richie says, shaking his head. “That’s what she meant.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Stan says and this time his voice is firm. “Eddie, what’s he talking about?”

“Literally nothing, I swear! She just wanted a pencil and I gave her one.”

“And then she gave you her number! Don’t forget that part, Eds!”

“Don’t call me Eds!” Eddie says, turning on Richie. “God, Stan, it’s not like I’m going to do anything with it.”

“Uh, guys, maybe you should calm down? I mean, I’m pretty sure we all know Eddie’s not trying to get with Elsie,” Ben says placatingly.

“Do we really—“ Richie starts, but Stan interrupts him.

“Yes, Richie, we do,” Stan says, voice communicating just how done he is with this line of conversation. “Can we please talk about something else?”

There’s a half-second pause before Ben speaks up. “So, you guys coming to the game tonight?”

They are. There’s nothing better to do in Derry and they all know it.

****  
Derry High pep rallies are fucking annoying. They’re annoying because they’re loud and because they’re mandatory, and because they expect you to be constantly standing up and down like a bobble head on steroids and because even if Eddie wanted to see the football field, where Ben’s probably sitting with all the boys that spent years beating them until they weren’t much more than spots on the cement, he’s too fucking short.

Eddie doesn’t understand how anyone could like them, but apparently people do, judging by the yelling around him. God, pep rallies almost make him wish he was home, and isn’t that a hoot?

Eddie glances around, wondering where the others are. Ben’s obviously down playing town hero, but Richie and Stan should be here. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie spots Elsie four rows up, whispering with Lizzie Hemings and averts his gaze in a millisecond. After all the trouble she caused, he’d be happy if he never had to see her again.

He’s still staring down at his shoes, avoiding Elsie’s eyes when he feels the bench shift slightly beside him. Eddie jolts his face up. It’s Stan.

“Stan—“ Eddie starts, because now really would be a good time to clear the air over the whole Elsie thing, but Stan cuts him to the chase.

“Richie wanted me to tell you he’s in the south hallway making out with Millie Jenkins,” he says flatly.

The south hallway is on the other side of the school from the field. It’s mostly empty nowadays, because they don’t have enough teachers to fill it so they just put more kids in the same class. Because of that, it’s always been known as the hook up spot. If you listen to rumors, which just about everyone does because they don’t have anything better to do, several babies have been conceived there.

“Is he?” Eddie asks, knowing he isn’t, but feeling like he has to ask anyway.

Stan raises an eyebrow at Eddie. What do you think?, it says.

“Sorry,” Eddie says. He’s not sure what he’s apologizing for, if it’s asking stupid questions or Elsie Swartz or everything that’s been going down between him and Richie, these past few weeks.

Stan sighs. Down on the field the quarterback has started giving some speech about kicking Bangor’s asses, probably . Real school spirit, there. Up in Derry’s equivalent of peanut heaven, though, you can’t hear a thing, but Eddie’s heard every variant of pep rally speech in the three years he’s been at Derry High.

“You guys have been bad since Bill’s been gone,” Stan offers. It’s not mean, but it’s not sugar-coated either. Then again, that’s the way Stan is.

“We all miss Bill,” Eddie says and even though it’s true, it rings false. That’s not why he and Richie have been at each other’s throats more than usual and he knows it.

Stan does too, Eddie can tell by the quiet hum he lets out, audible against the cheering around them and Eddie can’t help but feel a bead of sweat form on his back.

They kissed that last night before Bill left, Richie and Eddie did.

Sometimes Eddie can’t believe it and sometimes it’s the only thing he remembers, playing on a loop in his head. They’d all been somewhere between tipsy and drunk off of beer Bill had nicked from his dad ages before, sprawled out in the club house even though it had been much too cold for that. 

The others had been asleep, sprawled in a heap under blankets they’d all brought, but the two of them had been up, fighting over that stupid hammock in quiet whispers and then—.

And then it had happened, just like out, Jesus fucking Christ.

They hadn’t talked about it because that wasn’t what you did. They hadn’t talked about it that night as they fell asleep, pretending the world hadn’t shifted. They hadn’t talked about it in the morning, pretending they didn’t notice each other. They hadn’t talked about it in the weeks since, pretending there wasn’t something new laced underneath all their arguments, upping the ante by a million points.

Well, maybe it had been there for longer than that, Eddie thinks sometimes. They just didn’t know.

Stan had been there but Eddie knows he wasn’t awake. Eddie'd made sure, watching the other Losers half the night, checking to see if their breathing really was quiet and deep.

Still, Stan knows something is going on, knows it now, Eddie can tell. He doesn’t know what, but even having him know something’s up makes Eddie’s stomach shift uncomfortably.

****  
“So how’d rah rah rah fest go? You see up any cheerleaders’ skirts?” Richie asks when he finds them after the pep rally is over as they mill around in front of the school. Richie’s hair looks extra messy and Eddie wonders if he wasn’t actually with a girl, as weird as it sounds.

“You’re so gross,” Eddie snaps. “And it was fine, for your information.”

“Aw, Eds, can’t say I’m the gross one when you’re the one after your best buddy’s girl,” Richie says. Then his eyes flash. “Though I did some pretty heavy stuff with Millie, let me tell you.”

“Are you guys gonna go get Mike?” Ben interrupts, tugging on the strap of his backpack. “See if he’s coming and all?”

They always go and get Mike. They could just ring him, get him to drive into town in his Grandpap’s truck, but what would be the fun in that? That way they’d have to go home and kill time waiting for night to dawn and God knows if Eddie goes home now his mom won’t let him out until morning, so it’s better just to stay out and deal with her crying later.

“Sure, Benny boy,” Richie says. “Who else is up for a trip to old McHanlon’s farm?”

Eddie shifts. He’s annoyed with Richie, irrationally annoyed with Richie really, but he’s also not going to go home. “Sure.”

“I got to go hang out with the team,” Ben supplies, even though they all know that.

“Stanny?” Richie asks.

Stan eyes the two of them. It’s the kind of gaze that Eddie hates as of late, the kind of gaze that can see right down to your bones, right down into the deep, dark recesses inside of you you don’t even know exist. “I’m good,” he says. “Gotta work on the bio study guide if we’re going to the game tonight.”

“Suit yourself, Staniel,” Richie says. “Eddie and I’ll go. We’ve got it under wrap.” He slings an arm around Eddie shoulder and it sits there, hot and heavy. 

Weren’t you just mad at me? Eddie thinks. Aren’t I mad at you?

Jesus fuck Richie gives him whiplash.

“I’m sure you do,” Stan says and something in his stare makes Eddie want to die, right here, right now.

“Get your grimy hands off of me, “ Eddie snaps at Richie, forcibly removing an arm. “They’re probably covered in germs.”

Eddie thinks Richie looks affronted for half a second. Then, he breaks out in a blinding grin. “Aw, Stan, he doesn’t wanna get an STD from Millie,” he whispers-yells, leaning toward Stan. “You love me, right?”

Stan dodges Richie’s arms, but Richie doesn’t give up. He hurtles himself at Stan, catching him by the arms and grabbing onto the sleeve of his striped polo. Stan murmurs something to him and Richie’s face goes bright red, redder than a fucking tomato, Eddie thinks. 

“What’d you say?” Eddie asks.

“He said he doesn’t love me as much as your mom, Eds. Fuck, I might have competition!”

“I said,” Stan says, eyeing Richie, “that if you two motherfuckers don’t leave now you won’t make it to Mike’s and back in time.”

Richie’s grin flashes wide. “Somebody’s finally acknowledged me! I feel validated.”

“Validated, my ass.” Stan murmurs. “Get going.”

“See ya guys tonight!” Ben calls as they take off.

Neither of them can drive, not today at least, so they ride their bikes. 

Richie has a license, but his parents won’t let him drive, not after the deputy sheriff caught him going ninety-five on one of those roads out of town. He’d only given him a warning, probably because he didn’t want to file the paperwork, but that’d been enough for his parents to take the keys until he was more mature.

“Like that’ll ever happen,” Eddie had said at the time and Richie had stuck out his tongue, basically proving Eddie’s point.

Eddie’s mom, on the other hand, hadn’t even let him take Drivers Ed, had refused to sign the form.

“Eddie-bear, don’t you know how many children die in car accidents, how many teenagers speed?” she had asked and Eddie hadn’t even argued because he knew it was futile. Sometimes you just know.

They ride their bikes through town and then out, out past where the houses grow dirt-stained and the yards have more weeds than grass. Out past where houses give way to trailers, mobile homes that haven’t been mobile for decades and won’t ever be. It’s not particularly picturesque out here, but Eddie would take it over downtown Derry any day. The farther he gets from Neibolt house, from the sewers, from his mother, the more he feels like he can breathe.

They pass the trestle where a senior at Derry High got killed last March, stepped on like a fucking ant, the kids at school say. Nobody ever was sure if he’d waited for it and meant it, or if he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, a stupid kid trying to escape the boredom.

“In my day, we knew how to hang on,” old men grumbled on the porch of the Five and Dime, old men who’d been in Derry way too long and it had settled in their bones, and rotted their teeth to yellow.

“Think anybody ever fucked on train tracks and got killed?” Richie had asked when it happened and the Losers had been stuck halfway between laughing and being horrified at the thought. Now, remembering it, Eddie’s face goes hot and he’s glad for the wind whipping against it.

The houses have cut off into dry yellow grass and fields with crops that are mostly picked over when they catch sight of the Hanlon’s barn, barely a blip on the horizon.

“Race you!” Richie calls and takes off. Eddie, never one to be beaten, at least not easily, pumps his legs hard, chasing Richie down the road. The wind whistles past him and Eddie grins despite everything going on between them because this has always been his favorite part. This, riding so fast that it feels like nothing and no one can catch him, riding so fast that maybe for an instant he thinks he can escape his demons.

It’s one of the only times Eddie ever feels in control.

They turn off the cracked pavement road and onto the even more cracked and rutted dirt road that leads the last few hundred feet to the Hanlon farm. Eddie makes sure not to make his turn too sharp because there’s a rut half hidden by the crops and he’s already fallen into it once and skinned his knees two summers ago.

Richie wins by a hair, by a few spokes of the wheel, a fraction of the circle cut by a tangent line that Eddie actually learned about because Richie wasn’t in geometry. He skids to a stop and jumps off his bike all in one motion, the kind of move that would be graceful, beautiful even, if he wasn’t so long and lanky. Eddie drifts to a stop and props his bike against the Hanlon’s wide front porch and dusts off his hands.

“C’mon, Lover Boy,” Richie tosses, pushing clumps of curly dark hair behind his ears in a way Eddie can’t help but watch. In the last year, Richie’s hair has grown long, having escaped his normal yearly cut. It looks like a rat’s nest, Eddie likes to say, pretending that’s what he’s actually thinking.

Richie takes off around the corner of the house to the old red barn with the storm beaten chicken weather vain. “Mikey Mikey Mike, where are you?” Richie calls, voice loud and silly. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Eddie follows him, calmer, more controlled. By the time he turns the corner, Richie’s already jumping on Mike, laughing, as the other boy tries to wield him off with a broom. 

Eddie smiles, but in his stomach he feels a flash of something. Sometimes he wishes he and Richie could be as simple as that, could get along as easy as everyone else. Sometimes he wonders if Richie just doesn’t like him, if everything’s all a farce.

“Hey Eddie!” Mike calls, bringing Eddie out of his thoughts.

****

“Wanna get a snack?” Richie asks in the second quarter.

Eddie eyes him, wondering if this is some sort of olive branch. They hadn’t fought on the way back from Mike’s (though that would have been hard seeing as Richie had been banished to the bed of the truck with the bikes) or throughout the first bit of the game.

“Sure,” Eddie says.

“Can you get me nachos?” Mike calls as they leave.

“I didn’t actually make out with Millie, “ Richie says, once they’ve gotten in line, tugging on his hair, the scraggly strands that usually hang over his ears. “Just went and sat under the bleachers.” He points towards the home team bleachers, up where Eddie can see Stan and Mike sitting.

There’s a part of Eddie that wants to lash out, wants to say why should I care, I don’t give a fuck. He doesn’t though. Doesn’t because this whole thing with Richie has him out of his element times a thousand and he knows it can’t just go on like this, the two of them going at each other constantly for stupid reasons. It’ll tear the Losers, or what’s left of the Losers, apart at the seams.

But what if, his brain helpfully supplies, what if the other option will tear them apart too? That nameless thing that he can’t get out of his mind at night when he’s watching the shadows of scraggly tree branches stretch across his room.

Eddie doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything, never has.

“Okay,” Eddie says, pretty sure his okay isn’t just to Richie not making out with Millie Jenkins.

“Okay, Eds?” Richie confirms 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, firmer this time. 

Someone kicks Eddie’s heel. He turns around to see a middle school girl behind him, a junior cheerleader by the looks of it. “It’s your turn,” she says pointing to the snack bar. 

Eddie blinks. Sure enough, it is.

When they get up there, Richie orders for them, Nachos and fries and a cherry slushie for Eddie. Before Eddie can even say anything, Richie’s paying, crumpled dollar bills that make the mom manning the counter frown.

“How much do I owe you?” Eddie asks as they walk away, hand clutched around his drink.

Richie shrugs. He doesn’t look at Eddie, instead staring off at the field like he actually cares about the game. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But—“

Richie’s already running up the metal steps, two at a time, yelling for Stan and Mike. 

By the third quarter, the only thing dropping faster than the temperature is Derry’s chances of winning, with the team done by two touchdowns. 

Eddie’s shivering, glad now Stan brought those extra blankets, when he feels something touch his hand, something tangle in his fingers. It takes him a minute to recognize it as Richie’s fingers, cold as icicles in the October night. 

Richie’s not looking at him, eyes trained on the field, and Eddie can’t see their hands, hidden under the blankets, but he knows this is happening. This is real.

Jesus, Eddie thinks, feeling his heart start to beat crazily. He glances around, expecting to see everyone in the stadium staring at them, but there’s no one paying attention. 

As Eddie watches, Bangor gets another touchdown. Richie starts tapping his thumb against the top of Eddie’s hand. Down below, the cheerleaders start another chant urging Derry to make a comeback.

Eddie knows he’s going to forget, knows that some day this will all be a big hole, a huge gaping abyss of nothing interspersed with hazy emotions and vague hunches, but he thinks if he could remember one thing it would be this. Not the game, not the screaming parents with their handmade signs, not the cheerleaders who’s asses are peaking out of their too short skirts, but this. Richie’s shaking hand in his under the blanket, emotions and feelings reverberating in the cool night air, more real and more terrifying than any drunk kiss will ever be.

For science last year, Eddie did a report on black holes. It wasn’t his best work, mainly because he’d done it all in one night, cramped letters bleeding together on a rumbled piece of paper he tore out of his notebook, but he did pick up a few things. Namely, that you don’t want to be anywhere near a black hole, like ever, but also that there’s this called an event horizon. It’s this line, this invisible mark that nobody can see but once something passes it, there’s no going back. Not even light can escape a black a hole after that.

Right now, Eddie’s pretty sure he and Richie sailed past that horizon in their fucked up spaceship, sailed past it into the oblivion and the only way out is forgetting and he doesn’t want that, not at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! Hope you liked it, I know it’s kinda all over the place. Sorry for any typos!!


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